Chicago to Council Bluffs, Iowa: 463 miles. Two states: Illinois and Iowa and Council Bluffs to Paxton, Nebraska: 312 miles. Two states: Iowa and Nebraska Check it out! Two days and almost 800 miles flew by while you weren’t looking. But I was. Looking, that is. Out through the windshield. At corn. There is a […]

Toledo to Chicago: 220 miles. Three states: Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois I have slept well, because the most comfortable bed in the world is at my sister-in-law’s house in Toledo. Not to mention the loving, warm feeling of I get when pulling into a real home instead of an impersonal hotel. In this case, there […]

Erie, PA to Toledo, OH: 218 miles Two States: Pennsylvania and Ohio Today is a short day because I’m headed to C’s family in Toledo for the night. Stella was disgusted with the 400-mile day yesterday, so I hope to butter her up with a lackadaisical day today. And I have a surprise in store […]

I imagine that Erie, Pennsylvania is not considered the Jewel in the Crown of the Great Lakes region, because to do so would imply something too terrible to contemplate. I’ve elected to spend my first night here purely because it is 400 miles from home. In searching—last minute, so unlike me—for a dining option, I […]

Catskill, NY to Erie, PA: 401 miles Two states: New York and Pennsylvania My heart is breaking. For the past few weeks, our hands have been like heat-seeking missiles, snaking out to find one another whenever the rest of us was close enough for access. Just like when the yellow pages required your fingers to […]

Although concealing it well (I was yocking it up with Julie’s new and rather younger-than-me buddies), I was petrified by the prospect of grilling the three very expensive porterhouse steaks on a gas grill. Hardwood charcoal is my fuel of choice, always. I’d scored a meat thermometer from Ronda, and had a plan, of sorts, […]

It seems like the last time my friend Julie Benz and I chewed the fat together was a lifetime ago. In reality, though, it was in 2005, when we shared a big rambling house in the hills of Chianti for a few weeks of the glorious Tuscan summer (see The Chicken-Head Incident, at left, for […]

(Please see Part One, below). C and I have been taking bets about the apartment. He’s sure it’ll be an over-the-top penthouse. There’s only one oven, and the hostess did mention keeping the food costs reasonable, so I’m banking on a smaller, but still plenty gorgeous, abode (or maybe a Madoff victim). I win. The […]

Since, as I’ve mentioned, we live in a country where the arts can be seen as optional (ditto health insurance), individuals must shoulder the responsibility for funding them. In England, they have an excellent, well-funded National Theatre; Here, I join the now-shrinking generous multitudes and regularly auction myself off for the benefit of various non-profit […]

Here in the Hudson Valley, we are having the sort of deluge that will only be amusing—and even then, only slightly—après. That it should be the first year of the huge, Four-Family Garden is inconvenient, if not heartbreaking. The other day, C took 14 slugs off of one cilantro plant. Long ago, I gave up […]